


in so deep we're drowning

by badacts



Series: we're bad at this, but it's okay [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Get Together, Hurt/Comfort, Lame Jokes and a Lot of Texting, M/M, Sickfic, loss of voice, requited feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-02-03 12:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12748026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts
Summary: It starts with a sore throat.That’s literally it. A sore throat. Dex got the flu once when he was seventeen – the real flu, where you vomit and develop weird complications and actually beg for the sweet release of death – so it stands to reason that he just…ignores it.Dex is a first-line student athlete with a demanding major. He doesn’t have time to be sick.





	in so deep we're drowning

It starts with a sore throat.

That’s literally it. A sore throat. Dex got the flu once when he was seventeen – the _real_ flu, where you vomit and develop weird complications and actually beg for the sweet release of death – so it stands to reason that he just…ignores it.

Dex is a first-line student athlete with a demanding major. He doesn’t have _time_ to be sick.

He pops some Tylenol and goes to practice, and then pops some more and goes to class. He’s asleep before eight that night but it’s fine because his homework is done.

When he wakes up his first thought is that he slept so hard he’s actually dizzy. It’s not until he sits up that he concedes he might just be a little dizzy. It’s still fine, though. Nothing some more Tylenol can’t fix.

“Dude, you were _out_ last night,” Nursey says when Dex comes back from the bathroom in his gear for the gym. “I tripped over literally everything in this room when I came in and I swear you didn’t even twitch. I nearly checked to make sure you were still breathing.”

“I was tired,” Dex replies. Or tries to, anyway. It kind of comes out as a rasp.

“…what was that?” Nursey asks, pausing in shoving his shoes on to squint at Dex.

Dex clears his throat. “I was tired.” This time the words are intelligible, though barely.

“Are you _sick_?” Nursey demands. “What happened to ‘Poindexters don’t get sick, Nurse’?”

Dex rolls his eyes. “I’m fine.” He never said that, either, though he might have implied it. It’s not even untrue, because he’s generally extremely hardy.

Nursey follows him down the stairs so close that if he trips he’s going to fall right onto Dex. “Bro, you don’t sound fine. You sound like you gargled a wire brush.”

“What are y’all going on about?” Bitty calls from the kitchen, because he has a sixth sense for conversational topics Dex would prefer he didn’t get in on. It’s not that Bitty is a mother hen – although he sort of is – it’s more that he’s pretty adamant about resting players when they’re not in top form. Something his figure skating coach taught him, apparently. He sure as shit didn’t learn it from Jack Zimmermann.

“Dex is losing his voice,” Nursey says, because he’s a little shit who knows that. He doesn’t sound gleeful though. More concerned, if Dex is being honest.

“Hm,” Bitty says, brow furrowing. He puts down his protein shake, something he definitely _did_ pick up from Jack, and beckons Dex closer so he can put his palm to Dex’s forehead. “You’re a little warm.”

“It’s just a sore throat,” Dex tells him.

“Hm,” Bitty repeats. “Take it easy today. Halve your reps, I’ll clear it with the coaches. Nursey, keep an eye on him. I’ll make soup for dinner too.”

At some point this year Bitty has learned a captain voice which is all his own. Dex learned better than to argue with him back in his freshman year anyway, but it’s another thing entirely to argue with his captain, so he just nods.

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t die,” Nursey says, slinging an arm around Dex’s shoulders as they walk out of the Haus together.

When they get to the gym, he proceeds to police Dex’s every move. Every time Dex starts to tell him to fuck right off, he raises an eyebrow and says, “I’m just doing what Bitty said. You wouldn’t get me in trouble with the captain, would you?”

Needless to say, by the time they make it back to the Haus to get ready for class, Dex is glad to see the back of Nursey. And not just because being the relentless focus of Nursey’s attention is somehow amazing and horrible at the same time.

It’s the guilt spiral that gets Dex. Being half in love with your roommate and best friend means feeling like you’re carrying around the world’s biggest secret, taking delight in his closeness and then feeling like a liar by turns. It’s a rollercoaster.

Dex wants to get off the ride. Except he doesn’t. Except he does.

True to Bitty’s word, there’s pumpkin soup for dinner. Dex has eaten by five-thirty, but this time he’s still up when Nursey comes in at eight.

“You’re still awake,” Nursey says, dumping his bag beside his bed. “Look at you.”

Dex gives him a look and croaks, “Shut up.”

He now sounds like he drank a keg of rusty nails during the day. Also, despite taking a dose of painkillers an hour ago, he feels like the back of his throat has been sandpapered. Also, his head hurts.

“ _Listen_ to you,” Nursey says, genuinely impressed. “Give it to me straight – are you going to have to argue with me via sign language now? Or are you going to start with charades?”

Dex throws an empty water bottle at him. “Don’t be a dick.”

“Dude,” Nursey replies, letting the bottle bounce off of his shoulder. Dex should have aimed it at his face. “I say this with the greatest amount of respect and love and whatever, but you should go to bed. My throat hurts just looking at you.”

“Gotta finish this,” Dex tells him, indicating to his laptop. There’s literally nothing he would rather do than get in bed, and he watches with a degree of jealousy as Nursey flops onto his bunk and shuffles until he’s comfy. This time it’s only fifty percent aimed at the blanket Nursey is cuddled into.

God. Feelings are the worst.

 

* * *

 

When Dex was ten, he nearly drowned.

He and his older brother and sister were playing in rock pools on the southern end of the beach, hunting fish caught there by the receding tide. It had been a grey autumnal day, wind-swept and cold, but the ocean had seemed far away from the relative shelter of the cliffs above them and the rock outcrop all around them.

One second, Dex was examining a pair of shells the colour of the moon, faintly luminescent. The next, he was smashed face down by a wall of water and then swept straight off of the rocks.

It was sheer luck he didn’t die. He should have been broken to pieces on the rocks at the tide line, or drowned in the rough, cold swells, his body dragged out into the deeper sea. Instead, he was pushed onto a rocky ledge by the next wave, where he clung like a little burr, bleeding and listening to his siblings shrieking for their parents.

That’s the part he remembers the clearest. Dazed and holding on as tight as he could, the breathless certainty that another wave would drag him down all over again, waiting with a child’s faith for hands on him lifting him to safety.

His father came for him, holding him close and saying his name with fear he doesn’t think he’s ever again heard so clearly from his dad. That’s what he’s dreaming about – hands on his ice-cold skin, and a voice saying his name –

“Dex. Dex!”

\- he startles, coming up fighting. A familiar voice squawks his name again, because that was more than just his subconscious talking to him.

“Easy, dude,” the voice continues. “A broken nose wouldn’t be a good look on me.”

Those are nothing words, like what you would say to a frightened animal you want to soothe or, say, someone having a violent nightmare. Dex shakes his head, which is resting on…something hard? His desk, he finds when he opens his eyes. He’s sweating. He doesn't remember falling asleep.

“You okay, buddy?” That’s Nursey, his hand on Dex’s back.

“Fine,” Dex says. Well, at least he opens his mouth. No sound comes out besides a huff. He pushes himself up and wakes up his laptop to check the time. It’s only eleven.

“You’re kind of freaking me out,” Nursey says, sliding in to perch on the edge of the desk and examine Dex face-to-face. He puts a big hand on Dex’s forehead, and his skin feels mercifully cool. Dex’s eyes flutter closed against his will. “I’m pretty sure humans aren’t meant to be that hot, either.”

Dex levels him with a look and then pokes Nursey in the ribs.

“…I’m going to pretend that was agreement,” Nursey says. “You’re okay, right?”

Dex nods.

“You should…talk.” Nursey actually looks unnerved by the quiet.

Dex looks at him again, and then points at his throat illustratively.

“I was joking about the charades before.”

Fortuitously there’s a Word window open on his laptop. Dex scrolls down and types _my voice is gone now._

“Oh. I guess that should have been obvious.”

_You idiot._

“Hey!”

_I’m fine._

Now Nursey is the one wearing a judgemental look. “Yeah, sure. You can’t talk and you’re all feverish and disgusting, but you’re fine. I’m definitely dragging your ass to the clinic tomorrow, but for now, get in the bed. I’ll get you some of the good stuff.”

He bullies Dex out of the desk chair with surprisingly gentle touches, and sticks close like he thinks Dex might fall over. When they make it the three whole steps across the room to the bunks he says, “Here, take mine. If you fall off the ladder and break your neck as well as being sick Bitty will have my head.”

Dex huffs, but he’s tired to the bones and he feels a little shakier than he would like. Even if he could argue right now without resorting to sign language, he wouldn’t.

Instead he lowers himself into the still-warm imprint of Nursey’s body on the bottom bunk, lets Nursey drag a blanket over him and feed him some painkillers washed down with Gatorade, and then falls back asleep four seconds later.

 

* * *

 

When he wakes up, he’s…warm. And a little squashed.

Apparently, when Nursey told him to take the bottom bunk, he hadn’t taken that as his cue to sleep in Dex’s bed like a normal person. He has an arm thrown over Dex, presumably to keep himself from falling off onto the floor, and when he realises Dex is awake he says, “Good, you’re awake. Get up, we’re going to the clinic.”

Dex, whose head was spinning _without_ the sudden implosion of emotions inside his skull, gets up. He’s forced to ignore Nursey watching him like a solicitous nanny while he changes and drags his coat on.

“Maybe I should borrow Ollie’s car,” Nursey muses out loud before Dex makes the decision for him by stomping down the stairs and out the front door.

At the clinic, the doctor listens to Nursey rattle off Dex’s symptoms – and yes, it’s weird that he’s somehow guessed Dex has a headache, and that it hurts to swallow – and then makes Dex open his mouth so she can shine a torch down there.

“Ew,” she says, which seems very undoctorly, though she pats him on the shoulder after a moment. “It looks like you might have strep, Will. I’m going to take a swab to double-check, just in case it’s a viral infection, but I’ll put you on antibiotics for now until we get the results back.”

“Ew?” Nursey repeats, seemingly stuck on that.

The doctor laughs. “Come here and have a look.”

Dex then has to sit still while the doctor shines a light in his mouth again and Nursey peers down there.

“Oh,” he says after a moment, and then, “ _Ew._ ”

Dex glares at him.

“Dude, don’t give me that look. Your tonsils are mega-gross right now, ‘ew’ is literally the only correct response here,” Nursey tells him.

The doctor takes a swab and then ushers them out with a prescription that Nursey promptly steals from Dex and puts in his pocket. “I’ll fill this, don’t worry about it.”

Everyone else seems to be in when they get back to the Haus, and Nursey abandons Dex to Bitty and Chowder in the kitchen before disappearing.

“So the doctor said strep,” Bitty says. “Nursey texted me.”

“And me!” Chowder says. He puts down a notebook and pen for Dex on the table. “Here you go. So you can talk to us.”

Dex looks at him and then pulls out his phone. Thirty seconds later Chowder’s dings lightly in his pocket, and he pulls it out to check it. He laughs.

“Alright, alright. I should have known that was too low tech,” he says, flashing the screen at Bitty to show him the text, which just says _no._

Dex sends him another that says _but thanks_ , and watches Chowder’s smile turn soft.

A bowl of pumpkin soup gets deposited in front of Dex on the table. “Here. You need to keep up your strength.”

Dex smiles at him in thanks and starts to eat, letting the warmth of the soup ease a little of the pain in his throat and his apparently disgusting tonsils while the other two talk over his head.

A half-hour later, the front door bangs open and Nursey makes his reappearance, brandishing a paper bag. “I return with drugs! The legal kind, that is.”

He puts them on the table by Dex’s hand. “The doctor said three times a day with food, so you can take a dose now and get started.”

Dex stares at his earnest face for a moment and then smiles a little, opening the bag. His heart might be doing something weird in his chest – not helped by the way Nursey scrambles to get him a glass of water to wash the antibiotics down – but he kind of likes it.

He likes that the object of his affections actually kind of cares about him. Sue him.

_Thanks_ , he texts to Nursey, and then pokes him in the pocket so he stops looking at Dex and checks it.

“Hey, I just don’t want to have to break in a new partner,” he says with a tight shrug, but even with the joking tilt to his voice it’s clear he means it. “Just get better, okay?”

He means that, too. He sounds awkward, though, and when Dex looks at him for a moment he shrugs again and announces, “Man, it’s quiet in here!” before laughing at his own joke.

Before Dex can even finish rolling his eyes, Nursey has bolted. Dex stares after him for a moment and then shrugs himself.

Chowder pats him on the hand, though he’s smiling. “Don’t worry about it. You know he has a crisis when he feels too much.”

Dex kind of thought he had the monopoly on crises over feelings at the moment, but he supposes not. He just wishes Nursey’s feelings over him matched his.

 

* * *

 

Nursey continues to rebound between weirdly invested in Dex’s health and completely absent all day. By the evening Dex is ready to crash again but annoyed by the way Nursey keeps coming into the room, staring at Dex with wide eyes, and then leaving again without a word.

He sends Chowder a message that just says _he’s being crazy._ He doesn’t have to specify who.

After a moment his phone buzzes. **_Shitty would lecture you so hard if he caught you using the c-r-word._**

_Christopher,_ _as a crazy person I feel fully entitled to use the word crazy to describe my roommate, who is being crazy._

**_Have I ever told you it’s creepy how accurate your imitations of Nursey have gotten since you guys started living together?_ **

_Stop avoiding the question._

**_You know what, I’m just going to send him in_** , is the reply, and a minute later Nursey appears, this time from their adjoining bathroom.

“Holy shit that dude is ruthless,” he mutters, and then looks at Dex and freezes.

Still being crazy, then. Dex squints at him, and then points at the bed.

“…I don’t know what that means,” Nursey says, and does the head tilt he always does when he’s blushing which is a dead giveaway in the way his darker skin isn’t.

And okay, there’s really only one thing that could have happened that is making him look like that. Dex pulls out his phone again and texts _you didn’t have to sleep with me_ to Nursey’s phone.

“Uh, what?”

_I’m going to bed_.

“Uh, okay,” Nursey says. “I didn’t mean to, uh. It just seemed like a good idea at the time? I didn’t want you to run off before I could make sure you went to the health clinic, you know.”

_Nurse, I don’t care. I’m going to bed._

Nursey doesn’t look at his phone. “And also, I wanted to make sure I was there if you had another nightmare. Have you always had those? I don’t how I haven’t noticed, you were kinda thrashing around.”

Dex starts to send another text, this one along the lines of _what is your point_ , but Nursey keeps going like he can’t quite stop himself. “And, like, you said you were fine but you’re clearly pretty sick, and I was worried about you, and also I liked it.”

He stops. Swallows. Touches his mouth. Says, “Okay, I didn’t mean to say that, but. Yeah.”

Dex swears his own eyes are bugging out. After a moment he makes his fingers work.

_You liked it?_

Nursey does actually check his phone and laughs, a little fatalistically. “Yeah, I liked it. I was worried and…I like you. I don’t know.”

Dex has been called emotionally dense by a lot of people in his life, but he’s not a complete idiot. Nursey isn’t saying that he likes Dex as a friend. They’ve been friends for a while now, and admitting that really wouldn’t make Nursey look like he does right now.

Dex sighs and steps closer to Nursey, who is watching him with wide eyes. He lets himself be shepherded backwards towards his bed, sitting on it heavily when the back of his calves hit the mattress.

They’re so evenly matched that it feels weird for Dex to stand over him. He sits down next to Nursey instead.

“Oh,” Nursey says. “Okay. Is this…?”

The whole texting thing is really not useful in this situation. Dex considers it, and then hugs Nursey instead.

“Oh, okay,” Nursey says again, but he hugs Dex back. It’s on a different level from the hugs they’ve had before, one-armed with plenty of back-slapping. Actually, Nursey is pretty good at hugging, with one hand rubbing Dex's back and the other cupping gently at the back of Dex's head.

“Is this a feverish delusion?” Nursey mutters into Dex’s hair. “Wait, I can’t be the one with the delusions. You still know who I am, right? You’re not like…imagining some hot blonde chick right now?”

Dex leans back, looks Nursey in the eye, and then pinches him. Hard. Nursey squeaks.

“…alright, that was fair,” he says. “Hey, can I kiss you?”

Dex nods, and then an instant later shakes his head.

Nursey was already leaning in, but he freezes at that. “…no?”

“Strep is catching,” Dex manages to get out, barely a whisper, and then half-laughs at Nursey’s conflicted face.

“I’m going to concede on the basis that I don’t want to get sick,” he says after a moment, “But just know that as soon as you’re better, I’m going to kiss the hell out of you.”

Dex can’t stop himself from smiling. When Nursey makes a delighted laughing sound upon seeing it, Dex shoves him onto his back on the mattress.

“Okay, if you were hoping to get a negative reaction, that’s not the way to go about it,” he tells Dex, and then squeaks again when Dex lies down next to him. “Neither is this. Not that I’m complaining.”

“Go to sleep,” Dex whispers, instead of smothering him. He’s feeling bubble-bursts of happiness in his stomach, but he’s also still sick, so.

“It’s like nine o’clock,” Nursey says, but he wraps an arm around Dex when Dex rolls into his body. It feels just like this morning, only better, because this time they both _mean_ it. “This is me registering a complaint. Don’t say anything when I wake up at 4AM ready for the day, because it’ll be your fault.”

There are dozens of disparaging things Dex could say to that, but he doesn’t have the voice for them. Instead he pats Nursey on the back, faux conciliatory, and whispers, “You like it.”

 

* * *

 

The clinic rings the next day and tells Dex to stick with the antibiotics because he definitely has strep. The day after he can finally do more than whisper, but it’s a few more before his voice is back to normal.

He finds that out when he wakes up and his muttered, “Morning,” to Nursey is a normal level of sleep-hoarse, instead of a just-crawled-from-the-grave groaning sound.

“Oh my goodness gracious,” Nursey says, mocking Bitty but also sounding genuinely delighted. “Finally, the earth is back on its axis, and Will Poindexter can bitch at me just like normal.”

“Shut up,” Will tells him, and kisses him to make sure it sticks.

 


End file.
